The History of the Teddy Bear
In
1902, President Theodore Roosevelt was on a hunting trip in Mississippi.
As reported in the Washington Post, the presidential hunting party tracked
and captured a lean, black bear, tying it to a tree. The president was
summoned, but when he arrived on the scene, he refused to shoot the tied
and exhausted bear, considering it unsportsmanlike.The following day, November 16, Clifford Barryman, Washington
Post editorial cartoonist, immortalized the incident as part of a front-page
cartoon montage. Barryman pictured Roosevelt, his gun before him with the
butt resting on the ground and his back to the animal, gesturing his refusal
to take the trophy shot. Written across the lower part of the cartoon were
the words "Drawing the Line in Mississippi," which coupled the
hunting incident to a political dispute.
The cartoon drew immediate attention. In Brooklyn, NY, shopkeeper Morris Michtom
displayed two toy bears in the window of his Stationary and novelty store.
His wife, Rose, had made the bears from plush stuffed excelsior and finished
with black shoe button eyes. Michtom recognized the immediate popularity of
the new toy, requested and received permission from Roosevelt himself to call
them "Teddy's Bears."The little stuffed bears were a success. As demand for them
increased, Michtom moved his business to a loft, under the name of the
Ideal Novelty and Toy Corporation.At the same time as it was born in The United States, the
Teddy Bear was also born in Germany. The Steiff Company of Giengen produced
it's first jointed stuffed bears during the same 1902-1903 period. The
company had made toys for a number of years and had produced small wool-felt
pincushion type animals of many varieties. The animals were the creation
of Margaret Steiff. Steiff bears were first introduced at the 1903 Leipzig
Fair, where an American buyer saw them and ordered several thousand for
shipment to the US. While other stories have been told regarding the birth
of this wonderful toy, the simultaneous births in Brooklyn and Giengen
are the best substantiated.The cartoon at the top of this page is a later version of
the Barryman cartoon as it appeared in The Washington Star.
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